This Reality Show Was Canceled But No One Bothered to Tell the Contestants Living in the Wild

What if you were a contestant on a year-long season of Survivor, except the season was canceled and no one told you? That's what happened to contestants on the Scottish reality show Eden. They spent a year in the wilderness as survivalists even though the show stopped airing in August 2016 after only four episodes.

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Eden was a show that sought to answer the question: What would happen if humans had to form a society from scratch? The show filmed 23 contestants living in the Scottish wilderness for a year with no contact with or help from the modern world, although 13 of the contestants quit the show before the end, much like the show's viewers. The remaining 10 contestants, however, stuck it out and lived off the land of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula for the entire year as a society.

Participants allegedly had no contact with the outside world and were unaware of current events that took place during their absence such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Channel 4 explained their bizarre choice to continue filming after the show was canceled in a statement to the Guardian:

The appeal of Eden is that it was a real experiment and when filming began we had no idea what the results would be and how those taking part would react to being isolated for months in a remote part of the British Isles. That's why we did it and the story of their time, including the highs and the lows, will be shown later this year.

Some of the participants who left the show early criticized it. Contestant Tom Wah called the show out on Twitter for being "bullshit" and "a load of rubbish." The local paper, the Press and Journal, reported that contestants "resorted to smuggling in junk food and booze."

The paper also blamed the show's downfall on "sexual jealousy, hunger and feuds" and that "just as in the Biblical Eden, temptation proved too strong on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula."

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